THE LICENSING TRADE.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11496, 31 January 1903, Page 9

THE LICENSING TRADE.

TO THE XDlTOft OS THfi F&ESS. Sir.—lt is all very well for publicans *nd brewers to prate about rights of property and all the rest of it, but the public have their rights. I can take you to an hotel where tlie publican has a wife ajutl children, together with" a mistress and her children, all Jiving under one roof. It .< no uncommon thing to fitid all three oi them drunk. Yet the police report that the man is of good character, and the house decently conducted. Can you woader that the public, who, while not being frohibitioniete. favour neither drunkenness iior iiagnuit immorality, cast a heavy vote in favour of prohibition. When prohibition finally eventuates tlie trade will owe it to themselves and their friends, thfc Government, and the police. ' The outrageous bli»dness and ignorance of the police is too palpable altogether, but the U-overnment professes apparently to know aa little about the police as the latter do about the publicans. So the public will fail back upon the weapons supplied by Mr Seddon, i.e., female franchise and the Licensing Act, to destroy the trade. And as the trade has always strenuously supported the Government in its attacks upon all other forms of property, and its .restrictions upon all other forms of business, they are welcome to all that Mr Seddon can procure for them. Let them once be found in a minority and we will out-Taylor laitt in fanatical proliibitionism. If they will persist as they do now, even since the elections, in flaunting their contempt for the public, on their heads bj it. I have never voted prohibition, but there is a limit. Let me commend the foregoing to brewers and owners wiro have something to lose. Tenants have little at stake.—Yours, etc., SICK OF IT.